Mendenhall lowered himself through the blinding snowstorm of spores and pulled his lanky body through the surrounding darkness, the only light source here emanating from their Cryo-suited bodies as David followed.
“This route of yours is getting more dangerous as we go, Jacob.”
“It’s a damn labyrinth down here for sure.”
“Yeah, all we need is a ball of string and the Minotaur.”
Jacob made no response to this, and while David watched for the slightest flinch, there simply was none.
“We’ve got to get to the cargo hold,” Mendenhall said to David. “That’s our fastest way to connect back up with Lou and Kelly. Best way to follow Captain’s orders.”
It made sense as they’d come so far. Turning back and swimming up and out of the ship would take twice as long, so far as they found no obstacles ahead.
“Agreed, fastest way to find Lou and Kelly, let them know their comlink’s been cut, and their vitals are not registering upstairs.”
“Besides, our goal’s to inspect the cargo holds for anything salvageable.”
“Right. Got it.” But even as David nodded his agreement, he feared Mendenhall’s anxious voice and his impatience as an indication of his lack of duplicity at getting to the real prize he’d come for. Just what might that prize be? Artifacts and ornaments from Titanic like the elevator doors or might it be the creature’s spawn, its progeny? Had he—or it—held onto life for the past hundred years precisely for this moment? This chance for a full-blown spawning, a resurgence and regeneration of its kind?
According to Declan Irvin’s journal, the numbers of infected and killed aboard Titanic looked as if it had multiplied exponentially, and the fear that it would devastate the population on board and do the same to the entire population of New York—never mind that of the entire continent of America—had been the arguments put forth by Constable Ransom and the young interns as they had desperately worked to prove these facts to Captain Edward Smith.
If either Mendenhall or Lou Swigart was in fact the demon of Titanic, the cursed thing that brought Titanic down, then he—or it—was back. Back to unleash its deadly spawn onto an unsuspecting and skeptical world with plans to devastate the entire population.
Looking back, David realized that Mendenhall had watched as Swigart and Kelly had separated from them, effectively cutting the team in two. Mendenhall now said to David and thus Forbes above, “Watching Lou and your girlfriend go off as they did unsettled me, too.”
“What’re you talking about?” David countered.
“To… to witness the sudden, last minute changes Lou made. It smells of something, I don’t know… ominous. What do you think upstairs, Captain Forbes?”
“Lou’s in charge for good reason.” Forbes’ tone lacked conviction.
“Did he give you a reason for the changes?” asked David, curious now.
“Look, if he makes last minute decisions, well, damn it, that’s why he’s in charge—to go with the flow, so to speak.”
“We’re descending deeper into Titanic,” David informed Forbes as he continued to follow Mendenhall. “Just seems like odd behavior,” Jacob continued speaking to Forbes. “I mean, he wasn’t even going to leave the submersible in all the protocols I saw up till the moment we got down here.”
David added, “Yeah, what’s up with that, Captain?”
“I’m puzzled as well,” replied Forbes over the link. “Ingles, have you any idea?”
“Dunno—took it to mean passion, excitement.”
“It’s like changing orders on a battlefield in the midst of an attack if you ask me,” Forbes said, his voice trailing off.
“Nothing we can do about it now,” said David. “I think we just do our jobs and concentrate on the here and now.” Even as he said it, he realized his entire mind was on Kelly, and that made him vulnerable to error, and error here meant death. The ocean even at her surface was unforgiving of even the slightest mistake. This far down, any misstep could be fatal.
“Right… right,” muttered Mendenhall.
Forbes added, “I suppose.”
They found yet another stairwell, or else it was the one they’d begun down in the first place. However, it felt like they were below the debris and obstacles that had earlier stood in their way; in fact things down this far were surprisingly intact. The two divers pulled themselves along in the waterlogged, devastated environment, feeling a sense of wonder at the numbers who likely died down here, trapped in the ship when suddenly out of the darkness beyond their lights came a gruesome skeletal body in period dress—a woman who hadn’t made it off the ship, the remains lying in their path.
Their movement created just enough flutter to the dress to make the dead appear interested in them. Their lights soon displayed not one but many skeletal bodies here. With their passing, they could hear the rattling of bones. The skeletal souls startled David and Jacob, so far as David could tell. “We prepared for this—to encounter skeletal remains,” David reminded Jacob.
“Even so… even knowing they’d be coming… it’s a shocker when they show up.”
Both men had done dives to recover bodies; David knew what Jacob’s remarks truly meant.
They’d also been cautioned to be aware that if any humans had sealed themselves into the airtight compartments here, that their bodies might well be preserved, given the sheer cold that these depths enjoyed.
As they continued down the stairwell, pulling along hand over hand, going from upper to lower decks, the passageways grew larger, roomier—just the opposite before Titanic’s dive to the ocean floor—as the larger staterooms and roomier decks above were now crushed.
As David glided through the corridors, careful to keep Jacob ahead of him, he recalled additional information from Declan Irvin’s journal the night the Titanic went down—after Ransom, Declan, and Thomas were able to convince the captain and officers that their duty did not begin and end with Titanic but extended to the human race. He recalled some of the exacting entries now, even as he worked to locate the treasures and the horrors lurking within Titanic. His thoughts were abruptly halted when Jacob suddenly stopped ahead of him before an enormous green wall—a cargo bay door, but not just any cargo door. It was the entryway to the much ballyhooed, sought-after turn of the Century automobiles housed within.
David knew that 1911 seals could not hold up to the punishing pressures brought on by Titanic’s plunge to here. So on the way down, with seals compromised, water would have flooded the compartment, drowning anyone who may’ve taken refuge there, thinking it a sealed compartment and safe to support life that much longer. But when the enormous ship struck bottom with such force as it had, the door itself should have exploded outward. As it was, the door appeared in this watery world to be considerably warped instead. Warped in such a manner as to have re-sealed itself, thus creating a dead zone wherein the water would become toxic and couldn’t support life. Over time, the microorganisms in the water would have exhausted all oxygen in the water, or die off from inability to adapt to the temperature of the trapped water or the higher pressure or both. There’d be nothing alive in the room, yet it’d be filled with water. He knew that dead zones in free-standing water were due to temperature gradients, causing salinity to increase in a ground-floor area that didn’t get swirled with eddies and tides, locked in as it were, no support for life whatsoever. Only toxic water, deadly in and of itself, denying any sort of life the requirements to flourish. Life in all its myriad forms required a formula—a combination of elements—proper temperature, depth, and oxygen—in order to survive. To deny any single element meant death prevailed even on a microscopic level. And in Titanic’s dead zones, not a single such element existed.
the deadzones in free standing water are usually due to temperature gradients causing salinity to increase, and being in a depression in the 'ground' so it doesn't get swirled up.
Mendenhall and David quickly determined that the warped-shut door had once moved easily fo
r workmen on a track, requiring only a human hand to throw a switch for it to slide to one side, but no more. Now it was covered in the work of viable organisms on this side of the door, organisms that left the same sort of rusticles as they’d observed on the outer hull.
The mild current that flowed through the corridors here gained no entry into the hold, and neither did the divers. The door blocked them as well as the would-be migration of any organisms. Stymied, Jacob began burning away at the rusticles with his laser knife, seeking a handle or hold on the door.
Jacob even shouted obscenities at the rusticles and at the door as he worked on them with his laser knife, cutting away at the section around the area he knew from his studies where a manual door handle must be. He shouted at David as he did so, “Help me! Cut along the warped edges where the seams are!”
As David watched, the sight of Jacob laser-cutting about all the edges of the door formed the image of a man trying to break into a bank vault.
“Help me out here!” Jacob shouted again at David, who’d held back. “If we can loosen the door just enough to squeeze through, then—”
“Then we run the risk of ripping our suits and implosion, Jacob. You’ve gotta calm down!”
Jacob’s excitement over the find was mirrored in the cheers from Scorpio above, but also tempered with warnings from Dr. Entebbe about Jacob’s vital signs, which were clearly over the top by now.
“We can make another dive tomorrow, Jacob—return with the right tools needed to do the job properly!” David’s plea went unheeded as Mendenhall was in a frenzy to have a look inside, to see what was behind the enormous green door.
In fact, David realized that the other man’s sudden frenzy belied the notion he was some sort of monster. Jacob was treading water before the cargo hold door diligently working to weaken its ‘hold’ on the secrets awaiting them.
There was no doubt this was the place as the number 1-1748 loomed above the giant door framed in their lights. David recognized the digits as the same as those in their training material and Titanic’s manifest.
All this shimmered in the water before them, and behind the huge sliding door to the cargo area awaited Dr. William O’Laughlin’s Renault Town Car among dozens of other sports models and touring cars. What kind of condition might the submerged automobiles of 1912 be in? There remained the question, even so, would the motor cars of that era be museum quality or smashed to pieces with the dive? Or will they have been spared—anchored as they had been during the plunge.
“You realize where we are?” asked Jacob, burning through the jammed door, his impatience somehow showing through his dive suit. As his laser knife worked at amazing speed to destroy any remaining integrity to the door, Mendenhall was paying no heed to anyone. “It’s coming!” he shouted. “We’ll be inside soon, Captain Forbes!”
Forbes came over, “all right but just a cursory look at this point, gentlemen.”
David, who’d been working with his own laser knife, had destroyed any hold the door had on his side. He replaced the laser in its holster as it was apparent that the big green door was done for. They barely had to push inward with their combined weight to have it not simply open but to topple slowly in the dead zone water, shakily, eerily at first before giving way and striking the bottom of the cargo hold itself. This gave the men a first glimpse of the shadowy, dark outline of a row of anchored automobiles in this, their hundred-year-old prison.
“Careful, Jacob!” David shouted, seeing a ragged section of the green door bob up at the other man as if retaliating. But Mendenhall didn’t slow his rush toward the prize, oblivious to the danger inches below him.
“Leave it for tomorrow’s dive, man!” David said in his most commanding voice. “Captain, Dr. Entebbe, will you please order Mendenhall off!”
But Jacob Mendenhall appeared as a man possessed at this point as he struggled through the brackish water with its limited visibility. There was no slowing or stopping him and the orders coming from above fell on deaf ears.
David realized that what they had seen of the cars before was merely the tip of the show here beneath the dark waters. He also felt terribly small here in this huge dead zone area, while just ahead of him Jacob continued to rush toward the prized items he so wanted to claim for the expedition—dangerously so. More horrid thoughts of how easily their space-age suits might be compromised filled David’s mind, returning him to that damnable sub in the Sea of Japan. Still, all seemed well enough before the sight of not one row but four or five rows of anchored vehicles here with them. All were rather miraculously preserved. The moment recalled to David the time he’d visited China to see the terra cotta warriors unearthed after thousands of years and now the archeological find of the last century. He thought the cars aboard Titanic, once tidied up and placed in the Smithsonian would be the find of this century—and his name would be among those who’d recovered them. Pride filled him at this moment. He certainly understood Mendenhall’s insistence on gaining access and the other man’s boyish excitement now.
His reverie was broken when Jacob, beside him and staring at their find, said in dry humor, “Not even that mummy and its sarcophagus over at the aft section can compare to this, eh, David?” Jacob slapped him on.
“You have no idea just how close that damned door came to wreaking havoc on you, my friend!” David informed Jacob.
But Jacob’s and David’ combined lights and cameras illuminated almost the entire square of twenty automobiles in fixed rows, very much anchored to the floor with chains that’d held them in place for the horrendous dive a hundred years ago.
Only miniscule eddies caused by their own movement could be seen in the dead water about them. They were inside this cavernous area with all manner of loose debris and cargo floating about like plastic film props on a set. They must maintain focus and keep their bodies firmly in control so as to not be snagged on any protrusions either at their feet or along the walls where any normally safe item could become deadly in an instant if a man let his guard down. Jacob had been lucky earlier—lucky by a hair’s breadth. All concerns that now seemed pedestrian on locating the treasures they’d found, ostensibly to raise from the depths.
Those aboard Scorpio had fallen silent on seeing the feed sent up by Jacob and David. As he’d gotten closer in on the underwater garage before them, David’s own heart rate had gone up several notches according to Dr. Entebbe. The chrome and brass was as shiny and reflective as the day these motor cars had left the manufacturer’s hands.
“Good as new, Captain!” Jacob shouted the words to Juris Forbes and the others above. “We’ll need to remove four sections of the hull… take these beauties straight up on the lift. Going to take days, maybe a week.”
“How many do you count in good condition?” Forbes asked. “Any snap their moorings?”
“Hard to tell until we swim entirely around the collection,” replied Jacob.
“This is a religious experience down here, Captain,” David added, bringing on some laughter from above.
No longer fearing for his dive partner’s life, feeling a good deal more in control, David calmed and laughed at Jacob’s form now going about the cars—not remaining on the outer perimeter but swimming in among the rows like a big kid, excited, rattling off the names of each car. Obviously, he had studied the records involving the autos with great concern as he darted from an Austin-Healey to a pair of Renaults until he gasped at leaping onto the running board of one auto. He kiddingly pretended to be taking a ride bobbing in the wind on the running board, shaking the entire car with his weight when a sudden jolt against the driver’s side interior window displayed the intact features of a dead man against the glass—the dead driver at the wheel, his wife on his shoulder, followed by his children looking out at them from the rear window.
Jacob responded as anyone might, shoving off the running board, sending the ghosts of Titanic back into the gloom of an interior filled with brackish water, but as he recoiled from the sight, his back sk
immed over the hood of the Renault which may well have been Dr. O’Laughlin’s car to become suddenly snagged at the spine by the hood ornament.
David now gasped, a hand raised as he shouted, “Jacob! Don’t move!”
But Jacob’s earlier momentum sent him scraping across the sharp ornament. It was a sudden end to Jacob’s partying and antics. Jacob hadn’t seen this coming, nor had David. Some poor souls had obviously decided to die with their investments, dragging family along for the ‘ride’ so to speak as now David thought he saw one of the children in the rear seat wink at him, while hearing the outcry from Scorpio, several voices at once pleading for an answer as to what happened—their camera eyes having gone completely cart-wheeling away with Jacob’s implosion, and David’s being hurled about with fragments of Jacob’s suit and body.
As he tumbled back toward the entryway to this strange place, David crazily thought of the poor children inside the car that, for so long, had been their undisturbed coffin. He could only imagine how slowly they had died if indeed they had survived the impact, which likely sent them into the roof of the Town Car—likely crushing skulls and breaking necks. Those inside were perfectly preserved, faces intact since the day of their demise. Seeing them come out of the gloom—even had they been expecting these permanent residents to be on hand—simply startled a man. Little wonder it’d sent Jacob back-peddling across the hood of the car behind him, and David had seen it happening in slow motion as Jacob’s backside slid across what would normally be a harmless item on the hood of a car transformed into a deadly weapon, wielded it seemed by the spirits here.
Jacob had swam on his back, kicking fins high, rending a long scar along his spine as he backed over the hood ornament, and David helplessly watched in the same instant as Jacob Mendenhall imploded, his suit fragmented from the force of the implosion. Compressed pieces of his flesh rained around David like blood-red flakes of fish food.
The autos and the ghosts within them, a fatherly figure at the wheel, wife beside him, children in the rear, were by now filling screens topside, fueling the imaginations of some, the greed of others. Books and films were inevitable deals in the works, for sure, thought David. Scorpio’s monitors would create the first glimpse mankind would have of these buried treasures—thanks to Mendenhall’s rash action when in fact their orders had been to locate Kelly and Swigart, and to reunite with them. But the allure of seeing up close and personal Dr. William O’Laughlin’s Renault touring car had taken a sudden deadly turn.
Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 39
